Yahoo News Veteran Exec Preston Beckman Weighs In On Importance Of TV Schedulers: “They Are Always The Smartest People In The Room” – Guest Column
Editors note: On October 10, Deadline posted a story summarizing a Medium column written by Jim McKairnes, a former SVP Planning for CBS who’s spent the past 13 years teaching TV history at the college level. The title of his piece was “Scheduling a TV Memoriam: An RIP Of Sorts for a Once-In-Demand Television Industry,” which, among other things, said that scheduling “is the word that’s slowly becoming irrelevant to the medium, having less and less meaning as television itself comes to mean more and more.”
Both the column and our subsequent writeup struck a chord with current and former executives, many of whom were eager to defend today’s linear schedulers — even though pretty much everyone acknowledged how much the job has changed over the years. So we asked former Fox and NBC executive Preston Beckman, who worked for 35 years in audience research, strategic program planning and scheduling before stepping aside in 2015, to share his thoughts on whether it’s really appropriate to schedule a TV memoriam for schedulers.
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Tuesday night my wife and I were enjoying one last dinner with our son before flying back to La La from NYC when suddenly the “Bat Signal” went off on my phone. Several people I know who are still in the biz asked if I had seen a Deadline article that summarized a piece written by a broadcast executive-turned-academic entitled “Scheduling a TV Memoriam: An RIP Of Sorts for a Once-In-Demand Television Industry.”
He posits the death of scheduling.
I had read the piece a few days prior that was inspired by the departure of longtime scheduling executive Kevin Levy from the CW. I chuckled when I read it because the writer [Jim McKairnes] had reduced scheduling to moving squares on a board … the sexy part. Us schedulers know it is far more than that. He posits the demise of the scheduling role in the streaming era. Us skedders know it will become even more important (and more on that later). He seems to see scheduling as a stagnant gig when us guys and gals have been well aware of scheduling’s evolution.
Here’s an example: When I started my scheduling career at NBC in 1991 my title was SVP Program Planning and Scheduling. When I moved over to Fox in 2000 I asked Sandy Grushow to change my title to EVP Strategic Program Planning; scheduling went away and “strategy” replaced it. In 2012, when Peter Rice asked me to hang around for another tour of duty I again changed my title to Senior Strategist FOX Networks Group, with strategy to the forefront.
An ecosystem was introduced. I knew scheduling was not dead; it was evolving and I’m not alone in thinking this.
The essence of what a scheduler does remains vital. Sara Burns, who programmed and scheduled several Discovery channels over her career, posted this on LinkedIn. With her permission I want to share this passionate response to the notion that scheduling is irrelevant.
We are the ADVOCATES for the viewers. They are the customers. From my seat at the table, I prioritized building their loyalty in a variety of ways – the schedule is just one tool. We use whatever was at our hands from stunts to show titles to metadata and merchandising to help the audiences find what they want.
We are the BAD GUYS. Yes, sometimes we have to cancel shows because they don’t hit ROI targets. But if we are good at our job we can balance out the long range plan with content that both exceeds ROI and content that is on the bubble (and deserves another chance). We can be the HEROES, too.
We are the TRANSLATORS. Look this is the business of entertainment. We are able to take MBA speak and data to creatives and vice versa to ensure everyone understands how and why the tough calls need to be made.
Soon you will see we have infiltrated business planning at so many different orgs and capacities – just with new titles. This is just the beginning of my pitch to companies out there who are looking for someone with the vision to see the future and drive their business forward. Are there really more executive scheduling jobs out there, well no! I accept that. But this is certainly not the end of me or folks with my background. We have so many more tricks up our sleeves.
Pretty much sums it up.
Schedulers are always the smartest people in the room. They have the best grasp of how a decision ripples through the system and who needs to be on board. They are excellent communicators.
Schedulers have no personal agenda, unlike many of the players they interact with. They do not hold back and are willing to take the heat. They have less brown on their nose than anyone else in the room.
The issue moving forward are the goofballs who are running this business into the ground because they worship the streaming gods. I’m no rocket scientist but if you followed me on the hellsite and now over at Mastadon, you know my mantra is “all television regresses to the mean.” By that I mean that everything the streamers rejected about conventional television is now becoming part of the streaming world.
I was on a panel about six or seven years ago where I predicted that ads will play a larger role on the streamers. I was laughed at.
Several years ago my good friend Melva Benoit and I met with marketing execs at Netflix. We pitched them linear channels (FAST channels) as part of their service. Um…
As a scheduler I was often lambasted for cancelling shows too quickly. Err….
Streaming was going to service the niche audience. Now you hear more and more about broad and inclusive. And then there’s Virgin River, The Lincoln Lawyer, The Night Agent … in other words, network shows.
Cord cutting was cool. Now streaming is becoming more expensive than the legacy delivery systems. It’s all regressing to the mean.
Some streamers are starting to understand how the scheduling skill set applies to their endeavor. Andy Kubitz has made the transition moving from head of program planning and scheduling to a strategic position at Netflix. I was once approached about being a “strategic scheduling” at a streamer.
Rather than scheduling on its last legs, maybe it’s due for a renaissance. The titles will change but the people who have the skill set, the brains and the temperament will help to make sense of the current insanity.
Imagine a room full of baboons throwing their shit against the wall, hoping that something sticks. Now multiply that by about six. If you introduce a scheduler to the room, I guarantee you, far more shit will stick.
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